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Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author best known for her contemplative writings on nature, has died. She was 81.
Dillard died on Tuesday, Sept. 15, at her home in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts, the author’s agent, Rob McQuilkin, confirmed to USA TODAY on Wednesday. The author died of natural causes.
Born Meta Ann “Annie” Doak in Pittsburgh, Dillard grew up a voracious reader, leafing through the works of literary icons such as Charles Dickens, Arthur Rimbaud, Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway. She also displayed an early love for nature as an “avid collector of rocks and insects,” according to Dillard’s official website.
In college, the burgeoning writer studied English, theology and creative writing at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia. For her master’s degree thesis, Dillard made an analysis of Henry David Thoreau’s classic naturalist text “Walden.”
Dillard released her first book, the poetry collection “Tickets for a Prayer Wheel,” in 1974. That same year, she released her breakthrough work, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” a nonfiction narrative that chronicled Dillard’s explorations of nature near her home across several essays.
The book earned Dillard critical acclaim and even drew comparisons to her collegiate inspiration Thoreau. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1975. But for the most part, Dillard didn’t appear too enamored with fame.
“The press called me … and said, ‘What are you doing right now as you hear that you have won the Pulitzer Prize?'” Dillard recalled during a 1992 interview on WHYY’s “Fresh Air.” “And I said, ‘I’m washing spinach.’ And they said, ‘Don’t you know that this means you need never wash spinach again?’ And I thought, and probably said, ‘Sure, I do. I don’t like sand in my spinach.’ And I’ve been washing spinach ever since. And I think about it ever since. Did they think I was going to go hire a maid? I love to cook.”
Dillard’s other notable works include “Holy the Firm,” “Living by Fiction,” “Encounters with Chinese Writers,” “The Living” and “The Maytrees.” Her final book, “The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old & New,” was released in 2016.
After decades of public writing, Dillard was recognized for her literary impact in 2014 when she received the National Humanities Medal from then-President Barack Obama.
Dillard was married to historian and biographer Robert D. Richardson, who died in 2020. She had one child, a daughter named Cody Rose, whom she shared with former husband Gary Clevidence.